Remarks on missionary enterprise, especially in China

EE MARKS

ON

MISSIONARY ENTERPRISE,

ESPECIALLY IN

CHINA.

BY

'

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN THE “ CELESTIAL EMPIRE,”
SHANGHAI,

AND NOW REPRINTED FOB PRIVATE CIRCULATION.

PRINTED AT THE “ CELESTIAL EMPIRE ” OFFICE.
SHANGHAI.

1880.

Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2016.

https://archive.org/details/remarksonmissionOOunse

PREFATORY.

The following “ Remarks ” took their rise in a survey of
the Christian Missions of the present century.

The writer has, iu common with many, that feeling of
admitted shortcoming — almost failure — that results from
such a review ; but he is equally impressed with the belief
that all this is remediable.

These “ Remarks ” are so-called properly. They profess
to be neither formal, exhaustive, nor even original,
much less exclusive of what might seem, casually viewed,
to be incompatible with them. Further they are almost a
mere republication of what could appear in the columns of
a newspaper, there being insufficient leisure to give them in
their entirety ; they therefore want the proportion and
kind of treatment to be looked for in a regular treatise.

A fairly extensive substratum of experience and ac-
quaintance with missions is supposed in the reader.
Nothing here is intended for those who are without
experience nor for those who fear or decline to accept its
lessons.

“ Remarks ” must necessarily be open, more or less, to
the charge of censoriousness, but these are offered in a far
different spirit, as a tribute of fellow-feeling and co-operation
with earnest and yearning laborers for the spiritual
welfare of Humanity, and especially in the hope of assisting
to convey to the Loved Land and People of our choice a
fuller share of the benefits for which we ourselves are so
deeply indebted to others.

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There is here subjoined the introductory prefixed to the
Remarks on their first appearance. It runs thus : —

APOLOGY.

The following passage is found in a letter from the
hand of that first missionary bishop of the Church of
England — Patteson — martyr-bishop of the Melanesian
Islands. He says : —

“ I almost feel that if I live a few years, I ought to write :
so much that is self-evident to us I see to be quite unknown to
good educated men. I don’t mean to write anything silly, but
a very simple statement oi general principles of Christian work,
showing the mode that must be adopted in dealing with men as
partakers of a common nature, coupled with the many modi-
fications and adaptations to circumstances which equally require
special gifts of discernment and wisdom from on High * * *,
but I can’t write what I might, if I chose, folios of events with-
out deducing from them some maxims of Christian practice.”

SYLLABUS.

Aspects of the work — the work regarded as
The Missionary —

1. — A moral and spiritual agent.

2. — An intellectual worker.

3. — His social status.

4. — His political status.

The Truth —

5. — The nature of the subject matter held.

6. — Intelligence, its true use in missionary work.

7. — The nature and circumstances of that which the mis-

sionary meets and is to act on.

8. — The relation of Christian truth to native thought,

feelings, systems, religious leaders, and existing

circumstances.

9. — Relation to native customs.

10. — Possible points of contact (d'appui) between Chris-

tianity and native thought and religion.

11. — Some principles of intercourse with the Chinese.

12. — Some hindrances.

Primary Missionary operations, properly so-called —

13. — Some principles on which error and darkness are to

be met.

14. — Some modes of opening work.

15. — Some conditions of success.

16. — Literature, translating.

17. — Colporteurs and evangelists.

18. — The use of money.

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Missionary operations beyond the primary stage —

19. — Some general principles, conditions, and modes of

clearing up and diffusing positive truth and pro-
moting true religion.

20. — Some principles and modes of presenting, teaching,

and applying truth.

21. — Some remarks on enquirers.

22. — Accessories of missionary work.

23. — Stages of missionary work.

The Church —

24. — Some principles underlying the establishment and use

of positive Christian institutions and ordinances,
both spiritual and ecclesiastical.

25. — The Sabbath. •

26. — Church membership,

27. — Organization.

Church Life —

28. — Worship and edification.

29. — Piety and education.

30. — Benevolent institutions.

Church Authority —

31. — Some remarks on the exercise of control over converts.

32. — Persecution.

33. — Native self-extension of the truth.

Miscellaneous —

34. — Personal difficulty.

35. — Cautions.

36. — Points for enquiry.

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No. I.

A SPIRITUAL AGENT.

Missionaries and others often feel a very marked contrast
between their life and modes of action and the doctrines
they inculcate. This is more than a fancy : it is a fact.
From what comes this chronic state of Christian malaise
that exists even where reality and zeal is unquestionably
found, and therefore is not from the want of these elements,
and if not, how then ? Doubtless, from the doing of a vast
and divine work in a human self-willed way, and as our
own work.

Anyone who knows the value of calm and equable self-
possession, and recognizes in it the universally appropriate
bearing and tone of the witness df a Divine message, will
never make light of the original and real intention of
Confucius in enjoining Ijjt: upon those who were to be
the teachers of others. Far less can one do so in this laud.

No. II.

AN INTELLECTUAL WORKER.

Much that is urged on Missionary matters as considera-
tions drawn from experience will be opposed as compromise
and a bending to expediency, but it must be remembered
that we have carefully to discriminate between two kinds,
viz., the expedients which sprang from crude Western,
untested preconceptions of the way in which Christianity
should be established, and those other expedients based
on and dictated by experience and real fact ; for it cannot
be ignored that the state of Christendom and China — the
moral state of man in both spheres — is so different, is a
resultant of such different forces and conditions, that all
theories, principles, and modes of Western origin require
careful weighing and testing by experience before being
put into full practice here.

Here is one point only for your Christian judgmeut,
viz., can embryo and full grown Christianity be the same ?
Have they ever been found so ? Does the New Testament,
history, or the analogy of nature warrant the idea ?

No. III.

SOCIAL STATUS.

On this point only one question. Let each ask himself :

‘ Is my mode of life agreeable to the whole doctrine and, .

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life I teach and ought to exemplify — does it evidence it — is
it the proper and congruous form of it ? ” The question is
not merely what a missionary’s mode of life has in it that
is hindering his work, but further, what is it that is lacking,
and which it should have, in order to be the true expression
of the truth taught.

No. IY.

POLITICAL STATUS.

What the Chinese Government or any official hates, and
rightly, is anything suspected of interfering with it or his
proper economy and influence, especially combinations
that familiarise people with the power of united action.

Ordinary officials are genuinely ignorant of the real aim
of Christianity. Now, being, like all people, naturally
patriotic; nay, they being, in one sense, especially so, their
opposition to Christianity may be even found to have in it
an element that will command somewhat of respect. For,
surely, heretofore, even misguided patriotism has, at any
rate, been invariably respected.

Supposing there were as good and as many reasons for
invoking treaty protection as there are against it, or vice
versa, still, which course think you would produce the
sounder Church ?

May it not be truly said that the strongly felt • desire to
establish Christian societies should never lead to any desire
for protection or other means, the spirit of which jars with
the spirit of the organizations so sought to be established ?

Observe what the reliance of Roman Catholicism on the
temporal arm at home is coming to, especially in France
and Italy, or rather has come to. Observe here, in China
likewise, what it has brought its matters to.

No. V.

THE TRUTH, THE NATURE OF THE SUBJECT
MATTER HELD.

“ All mere maxims, views, on any or everything, prove
weak beside the proclamation of a living and eternal God
as the first step to His creatures out of their sensual and
natural degradation.”

What is the palpable difference between the Christianity
of the Founder and his Apostles, and that propagated by
Catholics and Protestants in these latter days? Why just

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this The religion now tried to be spread has about and in it
the results of all that apologists, controversialists, systema-
tizes and philosophers could do to make it fill the head
and be extruded from the heart.

Now it were an evil, though only a negative one, that
we paid no regard to the preconceptions and expectations
of those we come to preach to, but in this way, positively and
perniciously, to encumber ourselves with an inherent cause
of weakness, and cause converts to suffer from misconception,
diffuseness, and shallowness ; this must be adjudged on by
the candid reader.

Don’t let us assume that present Western Christianity is
typical and normal Christianity and everywhere thus to be
reprodnced.

You may say Christianity is always the same, what need
to strip, alter, or adapt ? Yes, true; but the apprehension is not
always the same ; and if you think the kind of apprehension
we now have of the truth is as affecting and effective as in
the early Church, then I would ask you to reconsider
your objection. Remember, moreover ; that present Western
Christianity is diluted with frivolities, overlaid with systema-
tizing, full of weaknesses, bound in rigid adherence to
Western principles, and lacks a full pulse of worship and
love.

What is it we aim by Christianity to extablish in men ?
Is it the free inclination of the heart to a loving, personal
will, or mere slavish compliance to the imperative of law ?

We take it that the genius of the Truth is to rectify
and turn iuto the right channel man’s whole nature to such
a degree as to amount to his having a new nature, and, so
called, “ born again, ” not to suppress nor dry up any of
that which came from God.

It has been said, “ he that speaks against his own reason,
speaks against his own conscience, therefore it is certain
no man serves with a good conscience who serves Him
against his reason,”

Who is it that, after they have listened to the dogmatiz-
ings of little minds, has not often stood in the still clear
night, looked up to the arch of heaven, seen worlds, thought
of the great Architect and Ruler, and thought again of Him
as the One from whom in all His works there could proceed
no contradictions — that in Him was no narrowness — that
His primer for man had been read awrong by man, and
then, realizing this, and going forward in larger confidence,
has found ere long that Great One, still near to bless and

9

seal every true hearted watcher for, and follower of, His
inspiration. Who, with such an experience, can doubt
that there is a sense in which there is a true -yvtioi?.

Have you ever thought how it was that our Lord, when
he wanted to exemplify that inherent capacity of the truth
for self diffusion and incorporation of other elements, &c.,
chose not his figure from science nor anything possessed
of mathematical precision, but named yeast as the emblem,
that least well-defined of all agents, and yet the most
powerful and subtle of agencies for producing impregnation
and coalescence of the heretofore dissimular. Religion is
the worship and love of God and man ; not knowledge, not
controversy. The more you controvert and combat, so
much the more you injure and misrepresent the spirit of
your message.

Let no one suppose the adaptation of the truth, means
altering its essential form. It does certainly mean denud-
ing it of the developments of the ages for use here and now,
and that while yet using and prizing these developments
ourselves as guides.

But wherever is preached substantially the truth held
by the universal church as to —

The Creator and Father,

God, man, redeemer, and intercessor,

Holy Spirits as personal indweller and sanctifier.

The inherited proneness of man to sin, and guilt, de facto.
The expiatory nature of Christ’s death.

The Scriptures as containing the Word of God,

That God moves toward man to bless him,

That man can have no merit, properly so called,

The insufficiency of ethical principles alone,

The two great typical ordinances,

Personal and social W'orship,

National allegiance and social order,

There is Christianity preached, and there are members of
the universal society.

No. VI.

INTELLIGENCE, ITS TRUE USE IN MISSIONARY
WORK.

“ The apostle full of the manifold gifts of the spirit, and
admitted already to the third heaven condescended before
the Athenians to the elementary process of arguing from
natural evidence for the being of God. The light of truth

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is abundant, but the clouded and almost blinded eye can
admit no more than a faiut glimmering; but if even that
faint glimmering be suffered to enter, it will train and fit
the organ that it lias entered to receive more and more.”
We must correct the errors of natural reason judging
according to sense, by the use of faith, and likewise we must
extend the view, and correct the errors of puerility and
thoughtlessness by appeal to reason. In a word, “ we
must be neither among the numbers of those who don’t
think at all, nor of those who do nothing but think.”

“If apostles and apostles’ followers used Alexandrian
and Stoic phraseology as the least inadequate to express
the highest doctrines of Christianity, making them instinct
with new force, life, and meaning, how shall not we do
similarly. Nay, more, they, the apostles, shew even a
studied coincidence with those modes of expression.”

The purpose of scope of revelation, or of the book, is
not to instruct man in things which God has given him
powers to discover.

“ Great strength is gained by a knowledge of the nature
of one’s own views and actions and by a complete and
rational adoption of a certain principle and design. Know
what you do, and wish to accomplish and be fully and
clearly aware of the principles on which you act and the
objects you have in view but let them be compassable,
definite, appropriate, and elastic. — Guizot.

Pascal well says, “ Nothing is so agreeable to reason as
disclaiming of reason in matters of faith : and nothing is so
repugnant to reason as the disuse of reason in things that
are not matters of faith. The extremes are equally dan-
gerous.”

No matter how any one may argue from their self-
established, or traditionary conception of God’s word,
or what they have learned in the West. Yet, when you come,
in the innocence of your heart, to put the said conceptions
faithfully into practice, and, in the issue, it plainly and ex-
perimentally leads tc a dead-lock or anything absurd,
then is it evident that human near-sightedness has mis-
taken or come short of the real intention of the divine mind,
and we are thrown back upon the discovery of sure original
ways by the use of the faculties God has given us for our
guidance, and which He never meant to supplant.

The scriptures contain the word of the moral revelation
from God to man ; to be that in all its variety and depth
is their object: but where say they, or imply thoy, area

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universal directory or band book of missions, or erect for
themselves the pretensions that are put forward for them?
Nowhere, no more than they pretend to be science class-
books, nor say they are.

The Apostles were illiterate and unpractised men (ificurat),
ergo, we may use such — foreigners or Chinese — to spread
the Gospel. Yes, true, to spread the Gospel on ground
they know, i.e., at home, or wherever they are at home.
But note that “ the rude in knowledge ” among the Apostles
went to the adjacent Semitic thinkers and speakers, whereas
it was the accomplished and versatile pupil of Gamaliel that
was sent unto the Gentile world, and with him went a
good Levite, but, of Cyprus. And not to stop there, it is
further to be noted that the men used by the great Mover
of hearts in affecting the various strata of that Gentile
world w’ere in the first instance, the centurion at Cesarsea,
the Greek youth of Lystra, and the eloquent Alexandrian
Jew Apollos. Are these facts without meaning, all one set
looking one way, and all the other set looking the other
way? No. God sends such men as are conversant, have
been made so, or are ready to make themselves conversant
and in hearty vital rapport with the modes of thought of
those among whom they go.

No. VII.

THE NATURE AND CIRCUMSTANCES OF THAT
WHICH THE MISSIONARY MEETS
AND IS TO ACT ON.

Have you learned, or can you imagine, that state of
heathen mind which looks upon all moving things ; sun,
moon, stars, clouds, rivers, wind, fire, as living personal-
ities with attributes, powers, gender, etc., — Gods, in fact
that they ought to stand in mysterious awe of ; or it is that
you have never reflected even as much as those old heathen
leaders of religious thought on the wondrousuess of the
unseen powers of nature and her living developments ?

The root of the most specious kinds of rationalism is not
merely in affirming the sufficiency of reason, but rather
in implying, or taking for granted, as reasonable and
true, an inherent and necessary opposition between the
first principle of all reasoning involved in man’s under-
standing and the special and suplementary revelation
given in Scripture. Now this being so, take care, brother,

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whether, in defending and propagating a rigid and precise
Christianity you be not actually guilty of this very kind
of reliance on that your faculty to interpret the Divine
dealings with man ; the misuse of which faculty is just
the very error you charge on your rationalistic friend as
his radical fault. There is, we think, quite ample room
to shew the incomparable superiority and range of the
Eevelation from on High without denying, or feeling that
we need to refuse to what man’s rationality has evolved,
the recognition that it, too, is, in a sense, and essentially,
of God. Man’s knowledge may be positive and correct,
though not exhaustive nor perfect ; and open to vitiating
influences from sense and earth.

Don’t be perplexed or startled when you stumble on
noble and truly elevating utterances of a heathen, for perhaps
you have not realized fully that the Divine Word was
teaching mankind before becoming Incarnate ; or you have
failed to perceive or experience all that is involved in that
fact, and which differentiates Christianity from every other
mere system of ethics.

Do you believe that whatever good impulses and higher
qualities still remain in the heathen are the remnants of
an original image of perfect a nature, in which, when man
was made, it is inconceivable he should not have been made;
and, with all their products, to be hailed accordingly as the
remnants of a moral, heaven-derived nature, and, in a sense
once perfect ? further, do you believe and appreciate that
very pregnant word contained in our Scriptures ! — “ That
call not thou common nor unclean.”

We are prone to forget here those parts and allusions of
Scripture which in the West we were neither called on to
explain nor to account for what is implied in them. But
here, in face of philosophy, as old as the time of Abraham,
we can’t but think differently of what is said of the tender
mercies from the beginning over all, of the Light of man,
in the world, yet known not of the world, and still none the
less shining in darkness because comprehended not of it.

Ask of a native religious system is it, in its essence,
(not necessarily in its corrupted form), favorable to the
principles of natural religion and a pure ethics, and, if it is,
as far as it properly goes, it is not unfriendly to revealed
truth. The further question whether it is all man needs,
or all the Creator designed for the creature, or can em-
power man or secure his eternal interest is another and
a very different matter, and must be recognized as such.

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Can any one deny that the wisdom of Chiuese sages, and
the result flowing from them so solidly and incontrover-
tibly for ages, are, in a sense, the appointments and decla-
ration of the Divine mind, and if so, then, the men, de-
clarers of the Divine mind and will ? If so, why rail,
instead of learning, and while we pity ?

You sit down and thoughtfully read and consider some
of Confucius’ writings and sayings. You do the same
with Lao-tsz’s work. You feel better. You are bene-
fited, that is if you come desirous to learn and respect.
The feeling clings to you. Can you, brother, stand up
and abuse them and take delight in laying stress on their
deficiencies 1 Is that our love for man, or can that be a
way I’m to show it ?

I believe it thoroughly correct to say to a native, “ The
more I know of your classics and the men who wrote them
the more I perceive (1) the good that dwelt so largely in
the writers, (2) The wide divergence of the present age from
their intention, and (3) the great necessity of special
Revelation and aid : this all being so, and presenting,
alas, an effeteness and deterioration which I, with you,
mourn.”

As men naturally are practically wicked before they
become good, and as the kind of evil men they were,
invariably affect the kind of good men they will be, so
men’s minds, being in a certain state of culture and imbued
with a philosophy before they receive Christianity, it
likewise cannot be expected that all that was chronologi-
cally first will- not affect the mental and moral change
following; rather, into this state of culture, be it what it
may, Christianity has always had to enter and begin to
initiate the exertion of its transforming power.

There were Judaistid, Hellenistic, Alexandrian, Antio-
chian, and Romish conceptions of Christianity, and the
man who thinks he can stamp out Chinese conceptions of
it, seems, to the writer, to have something yet to learn.
On the ri^lit way to deal with inevitable tendencies it is
not the sphere of these remarks to laydown. “What is
actually or possibly good in heathendom or Confuciunism
let us comprehend ; what is evil and degraded let us wrestle
with by proclaiming the good it counterfeits.”

Those who admit the unity of the canonical Scriptures,
but are disposed to question whether Gentile matter may
be received for Christian use, endorsed as the mind of God,
may, perhaps, have forgotten the bearing on this question

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of tlie precedent given in the reception of the Book of Job
into the Canon of the Jewish and Christian Church. We
know much of it was written only to show error ; but there
is, on the other hand, small evidence that the utterances
of Job are to be any better described than in his own
words, “the Inspiration of The Almighty” speaking “in
man” — and in his case, in a just and reverent Gentile.

“ Assimilation of good” is not to be confounded with
“ condoning of error,” nor are the results of these courses
to be mistaken either in history or in the present age.

No. VIII and IX.

THE RELATION OF CHRISTIAN TRUTH TO
NATIVE THOUGHT, FEELING SYSTEMS,
RELIGIOUS LEADERS EXISTING
CIRCUMSTANCES, AND TO
NATIVE CUSTOMS.

Are our measures of a tendency virtually to denationlize
people, or are we seeking to change as little as possible,
and only what is clearly incompatible with Christianity ?
This is not compromising vital truth ; it is not presenting
it in an unnecessarily self-obstructive form.

Just ask yourself can you deny whether, really and in
point of fact, Christianity has not, in a good sense, as well,
alas, as in a very bad sense, been adapted to the modern
social habits and life of the Teutonic, Latin, and Sclavonic
races 1

The difficulty of foreigners attacking any one mere Chinese
custom is shown by this : that of all recognised, unjust, and
unnatural inflictions from which females suffer, perhaps
none equal the violence done to their natures in native
betrothal; and this, all admit, there is no way at present of
rectifying ; to say nothing of private slaves.

All Chinese customs have a reason, and were instituted
to serve a purpose. With all their present apparent
hollowness and imperfection it is generally admitted that
it can be discerned they have served a very great and
unique purpose, as the institutions, history, and existence
of this people attest. Attachment to custom is, in
China, attachment to the principle and bond of social
order, i.e., a principle of patriotism, just as appeal to
the right and the fair is the proximate ground taken
by ordinary people in ordinary matters at home. It

15

is partly in virtue of this vast unbroken unity of
deference paid to custom that the nation continues
one. This being so, and it is so ; and moreover,
mental transitions being very slow — a process of arduous
growth on the one hand aud slow lingering decay on the
other — how gently and considerately should non-Christians
aud Christians be dealt with while simply declaring the
perfect standard of truth to them ; and lmw forbearingly,
too, should we regard our slanderers and enemies; and so in-
telligently might we pray from our very heart, “ Father
forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

How slow should we be, too, unless where we are per-
suaded Cliristain motives have grown into Christian habits
strong enough to take the place of conventionality as the
controlling principle of conduct, in urging them to lay by
quickly what, perhaps, they may as yet feel hardly strong
enough to dispense with ? That this is especially so with
reference to females, still merged in aud surrounded by a
society without a consciousness of nineteen centuries’
growth, and hardly restrained, by iron bands of custom —
seems clear on even a superficial glance.

All know the relation of women to public worship in
China as regarded by the State and by Society. This
knowledge is at least ground for caution in the matter ;
and taken with the remarks above, will snggest some very
pregnant thoughts to the careful reader.

Missionaries are not only destroyers — at least they should
be constructors — edifiers in the primary sense of the
word. That is, we cannot disregard the void in the native
heart created by giving up of even evil customs. They
must be healthily supplemented. With reference to
heathen customs of evil, false, degrading import, ex-
perience has shown that a continued partial retention of
such in connexion with Chritianity is a rottenness that in-
creasingly eats into those so doing ; i.e., it is then the
evidence of an original defect in the conception or ap-
prehension of the truth.

The unavoidable and real question regarding everything
desired to be inaugurated, or dispensed with, is, “ How,
from a Chinese point of view, does this appear ?”

Now, often, a few words of conference with an intel-
ligent native will suggest modes of becoming all things to
all men without one iota of compromise as to the underly-
ing and veritable reality of thought. We would say, “ Ee-

16

move only as much of the custom as embodies, is founded
on, and clearly teaches, falsehood ; for custom is necessary
to mankind. Follow the example of those who were sent
with purified spiritual intuitions and a large measure of
common sense to guide the early Church.” They simply
secured the believers and their households from snare, evil,
and offeudiug of others, and no more.

What nation has pure customs, if tracked up to their
souree ? Isn’t custom actually itself based on a confessed
lack and imperfection of man’s nature ? Has the history
of Mediaeval Europe and modern Kussia no lesson for us
in China? Above all, let us not quickly make Western
notion the rule for Oriental propriety, nor in any case do
systematic violence to national feeling that might hinder
the priceless message that we bear. — e.g., Missionaries,
we’ll say, snowballing one another, we understand perfect-
ly, and, ourselves, relish, but it is the thing the Chinese
hate as the worst of “ bad form.”

As regards the correct relationship of Christianity and
native thought, especially Confucianism, let us see whether
a principle can be found for a correct adjustment of that
relation. Suppose we lay down such a one as the follow-
ing, for use as a kind of touchstone, i.e., “ The proper rela-
tion between parties is the pure relation existing between
the ideas they respectively embody.” Whatever is the cha-
racter of that abstract relation, such should be the character
of the real relation recognized and existing between the
respective schools.

Is this relation one of compatibility ? they should be
friends. It is one that is of an interdependent and mu-
tual character ; they should treat it as such, in fact. Is
the relation one that is reeoncileable ? Then reconcile it.

Now let us bring the Chinese and the Christian ideas
into juxtaposition. What one word will express the sum
of Confucian thought ? — Suppose we say “ Commonweal ”
— and for the Christian we say “ The Spiritual.” Are
these two things in a relation of opposition or contradic-
tion ? In no sense. But it seems that some who under-
stood neither the one nor the other properly, thought,
because both ideas had developments, forms, and minor
points vastly dissimilar, that therefore there was a funda-
mental and irreconcileable contrariety between them ; while
others have imagined that because there were many
points in both similar, therefore both were of the same

17

identical origin, i.e., alike human, and so, on both sides
others have kept on saying and propagating what
somebody first drifted into. But these things are not so.
The two schools (if I may use the expression) have aims
terminating differently, and no defect in the one can there-
fore be rightly charged upon it by the other ; no more than
political economists can afford to dispense with or cry
down diplomatists who have a range of activity beyond
them, though closely connected with them.

So it is with us, and the remedy is simply to under-
stand the matter and then cheerfully admit it. Such an
ingenuous course, so thoroughly accordant with the rea-
lity as it exists, is the safest, truest, and most natural way
ta procure for our aims and our sphere the recognition
which ingenuousness and truth never fail to command
among civilised people.

It is hardly necessary to add that that the above remarks
apply to pure Confucianism and pure fundamental Chris-
tianity, and not what has been on either side put forward
as such.

No. X.

POSSIBLE POINTS OF CONTACT BETWEEN
CHRISTIANITY AND NATIVE THOUGHT
AND RELIGIONS.

That there is a government of the universe.

That that government is a moral government.

That their Pantheistic conception of Nature leaves ground
at least for the idea of an omnipresent Creator.

An acknowledged conviction of demerit and sense of
the need of expiation and reconciliation.

The idea of the family, and all family relations, as the
root and type of a perfect society.

The stress laid on conjugal fidelity and duty.

The ruling power in the State holding authority as a
trust from on High.

That wise and holy men are Heaven-sent.

The acknowledgment of faculties, longings, and states
of heart, with an accompanying phraseology, confessedly
dealing with the Unseen, and taking it for granted.

The sense and obligation of gratitude to the supernatural
and unseen powers finding expression in rites, and thank-
offerings.

18

The acknowledgment that self-denial and reflectiveness
are indispensable requisites to the superior man.

Feng-sliui has for its radical principle that Nature has
an Author and Tnspirer, and that the physical affects man’s
spiritual constitution and destiny. Is there not a common
ground here ?

Ancestral worship, the institution of China, is plainly
inconsistent with any but the belief in an after life and
reunion in another world. Isaiah’s writings, viii — 19 may
possibly indicate and suggest how cognate it is to some
Jewish notions.

The idea of mediation between the Infinite and the
finite.

No. XI.

SOME PEINCIPLES OF INTEECOUSE WITH
THE CHINESE.

As an instance of how cautious we should be in treating
Chinese according to naked Western ideas of justice and
propriety, an iustance may be mentioned of a prefectural
district in which no good literary man will hire to
foreigners, simply because of their never having recognised
native ideas on the regulation of intercourse between man
and man.

There is further to be borne in mind that we are here
first of all as conciliators, our message being nothing if not
distinctively conciliative, and thus, no wonder, since we
stand on grounds of right, they have not only failed to
perceive a distinctive tone in our lives, but even the foreigner
seems to have forgotten that it is by resignation of rights
that Christianity wins men, and in spite of all the selfish-
ness, power, and brutality that stand face to face with it.
It dares to do otherwise than be just to itself, and in dar-
ing, wins.

In the above paragraph the writer notes that he has
himself used the expression, “ treat the Chinese.” Now
that implies an habitual underlying consciousness that
needs only to be held up to view in order to be recognized.
No, if we could be genuine “winners” of men we must
harbour no such notions in our inmost hearts. Fancy the
expression, “ Christ treated his disciples this way and that
way.” Father “ I am among you as he that servetli.”
Brother, does our mode of life militate against that ? In

19

so far as it does, it is wroug. I just ask what have you
thought when you have seen the native brethren taking their
shoes off as they entered a foreign missionary’s parlor.
Which, think you, should be uppermost in our minds as
important — the Communion of Saints, or the cleanness
of the carpet ?

The above may sound a little extreme, but it is to be
borne in mind that courses, which are quite unnecessary
where Christianity is long and firmly established, and
courses which are perfectly admissable, become, under other
circumstances, the one imperative, and the other totally
inadmissable. The natural states of childhood and maturity,
peace and war, etc., etc., present just the same difference
here claimed for Christianity in its present stages of
growth.

Another way of expressing it, and in which it presents
itself sometimes, is this : —

Since the Divine Will is to win people by attracting
them, we must never be repellant, nor, for any crotchets’
sake, traverse the Divine intention.

Missionary intercourse is summed up in one word,
“Lead” men, that is, “lead” is that point where, cir-
cumstanced as we are, we are most likely to fail.

Don’t forget above all things that contact with the spirits
of men differs from iutellectual contact. There is as much
difference in kind as between mechanical and magnetic
force, between the language of a look and of a word. We
come to him not as man to man, but to deal with him as
a spiritual being, in other than terrestrial relations to the
God of the spirits of all flesh.

i

No. XII.

SOME HINDRANCES.

The spread of Christianity in China is regarded by the
Chiuese in about some such light for example as we regard
Socialism in America and Europe.

Therefore, from their point of view, it is genuine patriot-
ism to oppose it.

Isn’t that one thought suggestive of several more ? Con-
ceive the augui-di of such men at being compelled to
tolerate it and us in their streets. What does that suggest
to you ?

20

I here subjoin a short epitome of the conceptions of
Christianity as generally current among the half-informed
classes. They arose regarding Boman Catholicism, unfor-
tunately, hut are tgonerally applied to all Western reli-
gionists.

That we confuse and have no suitable apprehensions of
the natural relations, and utterly do away with all truth.

That our religion originated with Jesus.

That the “ Tai Ping ” rebellion is chargeable to our
doctrine.

That we are unnaturally licentious.

That we deny them to have had teachers of wisdom from
Heaven.

That we localise God as the God of the Jews only.

That if you honor Jesus, you’ll go to heaven ; if you
don’t you won’t; whereas according to native religions
there must he change of life ; to say that he who honors
Jesus is a holy man and he who does not honor him is a
sinner, may he well enough. But suppose those who
honor him are wicked men and those who do not honor
him are virtuous men, would not this entirely invert
rewards and punishments ? The above is from the
‘Pi-sieh-lu, and, at least is instructive to us in the
highest degree, as a lesson on what views we give cur-
rency to regarding “ the proportion of the faith ” we hold.

That we changed God’s name and deny Heaven, deny
the sages, deny parents and, ancestors, and by celibacy,
deny the conjugal relation and the common principles of
humanity.

That we have vagabonds guilty of death-deserving
crimes crowded in among us.

That we oppose and restrain the course of magisterial
justice.

That our ceremonies don’t deserve the name. Some
apology is made for quoting so freely from the ‘Pi-sieh-lu,
hut it seemed necessary to present these remarks afresh,
and in a fiesh connexion, for manifold reasons.

Next comes another kind of hindrance, viz : — converts
and followers are often “ converted ” into being a kind of
Christrian hornet — or theological scorpion — and in this
there is a genuine difficulty, and one rightly chargeable
to us. In short, we make one convert, and we do it in a
way to repel a thousand others — the man proves himself
a continual centre for the emission of repellant influences.

21

Lastly, every foot of silk a native pastor or his family
buys and wears — with work in its present stage — becomes
either a hindrance, an anomaly, or an entanglement.

No. XIII.

SOME PRINCIPLES ON WHICH ERROR AND
DARKNESS ARE TO EE MET.

Much opposition proceeds from a defective, partial, neg-
ligent or erroneous apprehension of Christianity ; efforts
therefore must be made to show it in its right light, and
not only so, but that it perfectly fulfils the Chinese national
conception of right, and is not really hostile to the ends of
Confucianism.

We all know the attitude of the Chinese literary mind
towards foreigners. The question is, if there be this oppo-
sition that manifests itself as a primary symptom, pulling
back those who are ready to believe, or have already to
some extent, then, in our work, how far will we intelli-
gently address ourselves to this evil, or do so at all ? i.e.,
how far will we ignore what we know? how far will we
prepare to treat symptoms or causes ?

How much might be expected in the long run from the
steady propagation of immutable and incontrovertible truths
and principles quietly and impliedly destructive or solvent
of error and false confidence.

Nothingcau seem more silly than the endeavour to pursue
any plan in the propagation of Christianity among a people
such as this, which simply goes to absolutely ignore their
character, institutions, faiths, and prepossessions.

Who of us, goiug to help a poor neighbour to build a
« new house, would first proceed to burn his old tenement
and leave him shelterless in the interim ?

All opposition comes of ignorance or emotional dislike,
as causes; ergo, use information adapted to correct the
ignorance and use Christian love and works to remove the
dislike.

One of the clearest living thinkers in the West, on hav-
ing the problem of Chinese missions put before him, said
“ The notion of man and life in the Far East seems very
hard to get into vital rapport with Christianity. It is to
be done no doubt, but more through, life than thought in the
present condition of Eastern Society, I expect.”

22

“ lie ■who teaches men the principles and precepts of
spiritual wisdom, before their minds are called off from
foreign objects and turned inward upon themselves, might
as well write his instructions, as the Sybil wrote her
prophecies, on loose leaves of trees and commit them to
the mercies of the inconstant winds.” — Abp. Leighton.

Of what form must the message be, is the question ?
One answer — negative — is, “ It' it sets at nought, or is
permitted by the preacher to seem to set at nought, the
first conditions of man’s original faith, nay, of his very
existence ; this, then, man feels certain cannot be from
God. Only that which assumes and takes this as its
eternal foundation, (and Christianity rightly preached does
this) and which deepens and expands them, so that the
facts of human liffe, which seem least in accordance with
them shall he shown * to rest on them, only that will
carry the Divine impress which the Reason, and the Con-
science it awakens, will recognize aud receive.”

Since the Chinese have by reason of want of use become
almost completely spiritually hliul, virtually dead to the
fact of their spiritual relation to God, so nothing can be
of greater importance than to take such measures as have
in them tendencies, direct or indirect, to beget this lost
knowledge as a first step.

My own feeling, writes a celebrated missionary, is that
we should teach positive truth, the piain message of
Christianity, not attacking prejudices. Conviction will
cast out old habits. All error is a perversion of truth and
has its existence negatively only as being a negation of
truth. But inasmuch, as man’s nature, though damaged,
is not wholly ruined by the fall therefore, it is still not
only possible for him to recognize truth, hut more natural
to him to follow truth than error; i.e., more correspondent
to his true nature, and I believe the right thing is to ad-
dress oneself to the faculty in man which is constructed
to apprehend and will recognise truth from its caricature
error, and finally expel it.

The above quotation is somewhat abridged and modified,
hut is the sense of the passage.

Such things as fasting, abstinence, and herb eating
occupy in China an undoubted place. They do also in the
Christianity of many. The controversy of this and such

* Note the concluding remark of No. 8 and 9.

23

like matters seems thus to be perfectly gratuitous, if not
positively wrong, and, most generally. Jamaging. Above
ail question it indicates a wrong conception of the true
method of approach.

To set men vpon asking, seeking, knocking, is a wisdom
always anterior to exposing oneself to the being turned
upon by them in their swiueishness when they, seeing, yet
see not, the pearly treasure of Truth.

Are the leaves of the great tree of heathoudom to be
pulled off or let fall off ?

Be instant in season — when you have a good opportunity
evuatfHx — and when you are mthout it anaipu >? — does
not however mean be instaut when the time is decidedly
inopportune, damaging, and bad, and is shewn by expe-
rience to he so.

Nos. XIY and XY.

SOME MODES OF OPENING WORK, AND
CONDITIONS OF SUCCESS.

The Chinese must be convinced we are ahead of them.
To make out and evidence this superiority in intellectual
matters is good ; but to manifest Moral, Spiritual superi-
ority, that is the pre-eminent requisite, and no other way
is there to this having of a name highly exalted than by
our first taking upon us the form of servants.

Here are a few requisites in a Missionary, that we can't
see our way to compromise, no matter what the con-
sequences.

Of good report for virtue and beneficence.

Active manifestions of Christian love to man.

Unselfishness in his work, and devotion to it.

Dependence on and devotion to the spiritual in his work,
as distinguished from the mechanical.

Appreciation of the state of matters he copes with — the
people’s conceptions, beliefs, and practices.

Interpretative observation of his own and others’ errors.

There must be the manifestation in our work of spiritual
certainty and power, as well as of loving activity.

Will any one be disposed to dissent from the proposition
that all missionaries are bound by the singularity of their
position and circumstances to live as simply and natively as
their constitutions warraut them in, and nothing to be used

24

nor displayed for it own sake, whether given to him or
otherwise obtained.

“It must be manifest to others that our convictions are
stronger then theirs, and that we have faith in unseen
realities, that are to them mere shadows. It must be
manifest we are witnesses for the Real and the Divine.”

To be isolated and feel no sympathy in others is a certain
way to excite no sympathy in others, and sympathy either
dies, or lives by acting.

As bearers of a message of good will and peace, its seems
inconceivable that such a message can rightly be pronmlagated
except under congruous conditions. Recollecting, therefore,
that we go among the Chinese, as suspected, if not hated,
it would seem that one of the first things to be gained was
the good mil and confidence of the well-disposed. "We are
among those who believe that in order to do this — nothing
is so effective as the law and principle of Christ of giving
no offence, always burden bearing, and manifesting such
conduct and other attitudes as are, consistent with this spirit
— a way far more efficacious than the roughshed introduc-
tion of the law of Western nations in treating people.

The Confucian by no means seems the man in Chiua
nearest to the Kingdom of Heaven, be he ever so perfect.
That is obvious, and the reason is obvious.

But there are to be met with secluded and yearning
religionists who know what it is to hold a sense of devotion
to the Unseen, and give it form and expression at the peril
of their lives — lost sheep — seekers after the Being whom
they ignorantly strive to worship and serve, if haply they
might feel after and find Ilim — men whose poetry bears a
relation to Christian sentiment as close and pertinent as
did the allusions of Cleanthes or Aratus.

“Sowing” and “fishing" are expressive of modes of
Christian work not to be forgotten.

The answer to the Missionary problem would seem to
run thus : “ At suitable centres plant missions on self
propagative principles, and of such vitality as to repeat and
multiply themselves infinitely ; be self- regulative, and embody
no primciple injurious to or destructive of these conditions.”

Experience to the front ; raw men at the rear.

Open up no greater amount of work than you have
good instrumentality and power to follow up. Continuity,
conservation, extension, are three distinct conditions of a
healthy mission work.

2d

Xo amount of aquaiutance with the principles of work,
however corrreet, will do away with the necessity of our
mixing socially with people, whether heathens, inquirers,
or Christians, in order to know their motives, how they
view matters, and thus become throughly conversant and
familiar with them.

True missionary unity, is unity of principles, not unity
of organization.

It is sometimes necessary to distinguish ourselves politically
from the Church of Borne, but this does not make it necessary
to show our Christian faith by abusing them, or laying
stress on doctrinal distinction.

Have a very definite idea of all you aim to accomplish, but
this is quite consistent with only a very general idea as to
the means. Aim, then, for your gaol by the means which
seem, as you go, the best, but, not necessarily your fixed
theory.

We conceive the following points to be very important
in Missionary work.

Clearly discriminate the good that is among the heathen
and utilize it

From the first imbue them, not with the idea that every
hearer is to be a preacher — an often hard way of putting it
— but grave in their hearts the facts, whieh apprehended,
beget the desire of communicating good to others.

Originate for them, or adapt — i.e., provide after a native
fashion — such simple customs and plans as will he channels
for the spread of truth.

Educate Churches — societies — to do their own work.

Lead them to devise and support, instead of idolatry,
and with similar methods of giving, missionary boards for
non-local work under native management.

Distinguish clearly between the inauguration of the new,
and the entraining and diversion of the existing.

Have an abiding conviction that “ the good ” and “ the
do ” are in your people — for they are the work of God’s
hands.

Trust and honor the Xative leader. Don’t tempt him.
If you do select and send out the best to the front as
teachers, it certainly has this indispensable advantage — it
gives the next most promising a chance to grow.

Hold and state that man are brought into a state of re-
demption from evil and sin for this purpose — that they
may work to deliver others from the same.

26

No. XVI.

LITERATURE, TRANSLATING.

Missionary literature falls into some such classification
as this. That which

Informs and conciliates the ignorant — thaws prejudice.

Silences the semi-hostile.

Convinces the rational, and

Satisfies those with the moral and religious instincts
naturally predominant.

And why does it so class itself ? Because society is made
up of such classes of people — and any movement to deal
with the Chinese as they are, which says it will neglect to
recognize Society as an organic whole, aud therefore deals
partially with it, will end, in unuecessarily bringing trouble
upon itself and its followers, and by neglecting, will raise
up endless troublous results.

It is reluctantly that I write the following words, and it
were an insult were it not that the existence of an immense
amount of translated literature proves the necessity of the
remark — viz: Translate ideas not works— the spirit, not

the letter — the reality not the word-form.

How amusing it must be to cultured natives to see the
theories that well-meaning but shallow foreigners — i-e.,
shallow as regards the vastness and depth of much in
Chinese literature — seek either to educe from or put into
their writings. Imagine the critiques which the converse
course would draw from Western reviewers.

Has it ever struck you how much there is of an unsuit-
ability in e.g. Mr. Sankey’s hymns for many of the occasions
on which we Westerns use them ; but how much more is
that intensified when promiscuously sung by Chinese, and
however accommodated by the gifted translators. The
same thing may be said, not of the matter, but of the from,
&c., for instance, of the Epistle to the Romans. How
irrelevant for years and years that must all seem to a
Chinese! i.e., we don’t blame the apostle or the Chinese,
but those who wont draw out and adapt that which is
universally and eternally true, to the comparative neglect
of the temporary and local.

Let there be a deep religious tone in all our books, and
a reverential handling of the matter in hand. We mustn’t,
in religious books, give a secular coloring or mere intel-
lectual conception of the way of God.

27

In the majority of the cases of natives who bought books
without explanation (notably portions of Scripture), they
will tell you afterwards that they had no definite conception
what these books related to. Why ? Because the writer
or salesman presumed on a substratum of knowledge only
found in the west, or did not begin at points already re-
cognized as true by the native.

It seems to us absurd to use what only the possessors
of modern science in the West know to prove doctrine to
those who never heard of these tilings.

In writing, at a rough blow, as it were, to level what the
Chinese must be excused for cherishing, seems to be an
extreme form of opposition to the order of things permitted
in the world, and is a certain violation of the laws which
are known to regulate the reception of truth or giving up
of error, according as the process is accompanied with the
painful or not.

A Chinese remarked to the writer some time ago a3
follows : “ I am acquainted with most of the best books
published by the western missionaries, and there seems to
be one mode of appealing to us native people which they
have never adopted. It is this : they have not searched
among the writers of our most distinguished literary period
in modern times, for the proof there so abundantly to be
had of a party who clearly saw and faithfully witnessed to
a declension and warping of the ancient principles and
ceremonies.” Now, continued my friend, “ once granted de-
clension— once granted that the present is not what it ought
to be or is mentioned to have been — once secure and popu-
larize this conviction, without controversy, and by native,
though generally inaccessible, means — and you prepare the
way for — the loosening of the entire superstructure that has
been added to, and has degraded, pure original Con-
fucianism.”

Nos. XVII and XVIII.

COLPORTEURS, EVANGELISTS, AND PASTORS,
THE SINEWS OF WAR, THE USE OF THE
MONEY.

Paying foreign money, or giving any equivalent for the
preaching of the Gospel within the range of native (church)
action, seems to be the way of procuring the extension of

28

the truth most surely tending to attract the worst people
to it.

The idea of “ nett proceeds ” out of the preaching of
the Truth from Heaven, seems to need only this statement
of it to ensure how it shall be judged of.

Use foreign money for what it was given — to plant;
and once planted, use no more.

China can never be evangelized but by fearlessly telling
the enquirer from the very beginning it is his duty, not
only to spread the truth, but to support (such) teachers in
such a way as his spiritual instincts and appetites in their
now state of development dictate to him he should, and
that the obligations of such teachers, especially in such
circumstances as now, are to all men, and not merely to
his supporters.

Well wrote a brother missionary: — “Lift the whole
question of remuneration from duty and pay, on which it
has been placed by us foreigners, to love of God and pity
to man.”

Can it be possible that the people who have been
brought from darkness to light will refuse to help their
rescuer to save others ?

As this country supports Taoist and Buddhist priests,
such is the style in which we may reasonably expect it to
support Christian teachers.

Demands for pecuniary help on missionaries must be
met by the principle that they should help us.

Not to live on native Christians, is to live on foreign
Christians.

That the scholar should support the teacher is a principle
well understood in China. That those who experience
benefit should help to confer it, is a principle written in
man’s heart by the finger of God.

Whatever ends in being a financial success with a native,
may always be reasonably suspected as to its genuineness,
unless long experience shows the contrary, and as to what
is or is not a financial stroke, natives are the only judges ;
foreigners, in such matter, being reputed to wear leather
instead of glass spectacles when looking into such matters.

All the foreigner can (or perhaps ought to) give, is truth
and direction. The rest, natives should find. The force
is heaven-sent, not cash-created.

If you give away books (and we feel it is generally best, at *
first, to do so), in the second instance, do so, most assuredly

29

only on evidence that they are used or learned, and sub-
sequently only in proportion as the use and effect of the
books is manifested by zeal.

One writing from India says, “ Remembering what was
done by heathens for the maintenence of the service of the
gods, I instituted the following custom : — Every morning
and evening when setting aside the rice for the family meals,
a handful is set aside for the service of God. At the end
of the month the rice is collected from the different fami-
lies and the proceeds go in support of the preachers above-
mentioned. Our people have also learned to give a part
of their first crop as first fruits for the service of God. I
have by these means succeeded to a great extent iu de-
veloping in our people a spirit of generosity.”

No. XIX.

SOME GENERAL PRINCIPLES, CONDITIONS, AND
MODES OF CLEARING UP AND DIFFUSING
POSITIVE TRUTH, AND PROMOTING
TRUE RELIGION.

Is there nothing to be gained by our representing our-
selves to be what we really are (though more), viz., the
aimers after and fulfillers of that end which Chinese
philosophers longed for — as including, in fact, the idea of
the true restoration of the ruin into which matters here,
for obvious reasons, have virtually fallen and which
restoration they so vainly, though so nobly, strove after,
in the sole use of the means laid down of old ? Must we
missionaries be theological privateers, sailing under Western
colours with a general commission “ to sink, burn, and
destroy” all we meet; or can we not intelligently include,
adopt, and become penetrated with the great desire of the
good men of old in China in a far higher sense, and make
it evident that we, in seeking a kingdom which cannot bo
moved, of all other ways choose that the most effectual and
fundamentally germane to the personal, social, and political
object in view with their philosophers from the beginning 1
One aspect of the question is, did the first messengers of
Christianity take for points of departure, in speaking to
their audieuces, what they all had iu common up to certain
points, and from that proceed to evolve or lead up to those
points which they in addition witnessed ; did they tumble

30

out Christian doctrines before Jews and Gentiles in an
orderless, untimely manner, or are there direct indications
of the contrary in the records of their practices and writ-
ings.

Christianity must be presented from those sides, by such
avenues, and in such form as will solve the perplexities and
allay the fears of the human mind ; and not by the bald
affirmation of truths, nor mere imposition of new require-
ments which stagger; much less in shapes, or having accom-
paniments, that will coalesce with scarcely any conditions
of the people to whom it is proclaimed.

What is required is, to make the change from heathen-
dom, darkness and spiritual death to the way of truth
and light and life, radical and essential; but in doing so, not
unnecessarily difficult ; i.e., we must neither combat so as
to repel, propound so as to offend, nor impose so as to
burden. Now the fact is that essential , fundamental truth
has less of such tendencies thau the distinctive and anti-
thetic features of modern Christianity badly brought, as they
are now, to the foreground in the very beginning.

The founder of Christianity during his ministry very
frequently said, “ Many are called, but few are chosen.”
The great Teacher who used the parables to such
effect knew well the extent to which the working of
heavenly and moral forces was modified by humanity as
it is. Yes, the choice ones are few, but they must be
sought. Affect them, and they will affect others better
than you can. This is fishing for men ; i.e., searching for
and dealing with those whose moral and religious tenor is
much of your own pitch, and yet sufficiently near others of
their countrymen to bridge the gulf between you and the
next class beyond. Any plan of missionary work that
neglects this feature, neglects also the utterances of Divine
Wisdom, its particular, i.e., its finer and minute teachings,
to say nothing of the violence done to reason, nature, and
experience.

Don’t say the Chinese don’t like the Gospel. True, the
evil nowhere like it, and the good have a difficulty in liking
it even at home when they hear it handled in a silly way ;
but find the right man, handle your subject in the right
way, lay down the great aim of all moral teaching and all
government, give him first what he can lay hold of — right
unfoldings of the goodness of God in Nature ; this brings
him to feel his obligations more or less; that is, in other

31

words, bis sin, his debt, bis ingratitude, his recognition of
the obligation involved in the relation to a superior being.
Next lay hold on his conscience as to his moral state, and not
till then, and perhaps only then after much time and by an
inch by inch progress, can he understand what you mean by
the worth of Redemption. Not that indeed spiritual forces
invariably act in every person and time alike. This is
only intended to apply on the whole. But reverse these
steps, and what on the whole do you find: why, instead of
a patient and hopeful learner, you meet for the most part
an incredulous and restless scoffer, and that, most pro-
bably, made so by mismanagement.

Some say, “Take the law first to him;” others say
“ Take the gospel first to him.” The latter seems right.
Glad tidings are what create true religious feeling of regard
and obligation, but then let him begin with the Alpha of
the gospel — not the Omega. Go hack to his standpoint ;
don’t talk back from yours.

Speaking of glad-tidings brings up this remark. The
Gospel truly is such, but there is a difference in different
people’s apprehensions of what are to them good tidings — e.g.
to a hungry child and to a drowning man. Therefore, as
regards the peculiar feature of evangelical truth, it has
first to be asked what is that which is a real evangel to a
Chinese now and his present condition as he sees it, or as
you have brought him to see it. Now this all takes con-
sideration and adjustment, for we don’t so keenly appre-
ciate what they do, nor do they understand, or under-
standing, dwell on, the features we love. It is the power
and wisdom of Ged for all. That, we know ; only let us
rightly divide the word of truth so that we give the native
what he needs and longs for, not merely what we need for
ourselves, and may be above, or unprofitable for, him.
The spiritual healing of the nations is not to be accom-
plished iu any less discreet and discriminating manner
than is the physical work done in the dispensary and
hospital ward.

No. XX.

SOME PRINCIPLES AND MODES OF PRESENTING
TEACHING AND APPLYING TRUTH.

The Founder of Chi’istianity also spoke parables that
expecially concerned missionaries of his truth. Such were

these regarding the Mustard Seed, the Leaven, the Tares,
New Cloth and Old Garment, Sower, Net, Seed growing
secretly. Consider these taken all together, and what a
flood of light they throw on this head.

Don’t let the phrase “antagonism to error” betray you
into any striving controversy that shall he out of harmony
with “the wisdom which coueth down from above.” In
a word, encourage nothing that is combative, and because
combative, repellant in form.

Truth has a growth, and a slow growth in the mind.
The perceiving and assimilating powers of human mind are
limited. There is such a thing as mental choking — mental
indigestion from overloading. Moreover, the mind receives
and accepts more easily and naturally those things which
indirectly reach it than those which are dogmatically pro-
pounded to it previous to its decision. Hence, by gradation
in the development of knowledge, ascent many be made,
and a high position attained, which bluffly occurring in
the path, would be insurmountable.

Get people to believe one thing and they will soon believe
evverything ; therefore we would say, with all their getting
get them to first accept one or few things. If they stumble
at the first thing you say, or at matter, the connection of
which with what they admit remains unperceived, the
chances are they’ll object right away to the whole line that
follows.

Seek to discern the indications th it the varied surface of
humanity presents as to where and how to work. We
enter not into the cause here. It is what an apostle
calls “ asuredly gathering that he was called to preach," &c.,
&c.

Never close the avenues to man’s sympathies by cynical
abuse of his practices — never ridicule them — never even
smile at them.

The unanswerableness of appeals to the analogy of nature
in replying to all objections brought forward by Chinese
believing in ^ cannot be overrated.

That the Apostle Paul labored mostly in cities and large
centres is only saying that he labored on 11 prepared
ground,” i.e. , at points where commerce had attracted
numbers of Jews and proselytes — the strangers of the dis-
persion.

Concentrate your time on the matter and spirit of your
message — not on its accessories.

33

Present the truth in the right order, of the right kind,
and in the right proportions — not so as to appear to others
as a caricature.

The teaching of Scripture, or of the men who spake as
they were moved, and of whose words, &c., that Scripture
is the record, is progressive, yet never in any early stage or
age compromising truth. Neither does it ignore the state
— so often the unreceptive state — of those hearers to whom
it was first addressed, but always in a manner adapted to
rude unspiritual natures and to indolent unthinking and
vacant minds.

Never stand up to address Christians or Heathens, except
in a spirit reflective of and beaming with the all-compre-
hensive and everexisting Love of God in Christ Jesus.
Everything will go right when that possesses the soul and
is seen in the expression, moulds the attitude, and fills the
words.

Has the question ever presented itself to you, “ Do I
understand — appreciate — that which constitutes the dis-
tinctive and essential kind of humanity found in China —
do I honour it in itself — do I sympathise heartily with it
as one of the great products that has come from the Divine
Hand ? ”

Reconciliation to the truth is a process, in which there
is a growth of certain elements and a withering of certain
elements.

The Scriptures are a treasury to which we are to lead
and point them, as they feel need of more Divine Teaching,
i.e., as if to find what they were in search of. That is,
this course is to he distinguished from a trying to take,
and irrespective of their desire to search, put all the con-
tents, relative and irrelative, wanted or not cared for,
before them, and into them.

It was once said by an afterwards great teacher of
heathen regarding an obscure congregation in a village in a
Christian country, “ To cram positive teaching down their
throats upon the authority of the Church or before they know
what the Church is, or feel the need of any power outside
their own minds to guide them, does seems to me, in a
place like this, suicidal.” How much more would he after-
wards have written that of his heathen converts.

“ There is one way of giving freshness and importance,”
says Abp. Leighton, “ to the most commonplace truths,
that of making men reflect on them in direct reference

34

to their own state and conduct, to their own past and
future being.”

“ Education consists in teaching people to bear respon-
sibilities and laying the responsibility on them as they are
able to bear them.” But that takes a fearless confidence
in the power of Truth no less than a prudent circumspec-
tion in applying this principle.

The gospel possessess not only a suitableness and fitness
for mankind, but also an adaptability to mankind.

The present mode of preaching to the Chinese and
Hindus seems to me like a mother giving crude and
husky ears of corn to her babe, and saying, “ Take it or
leave it — live on it or die by it,” as it could — i.e., disregard
of nature and neither careful study of wants nor adapta-
tion.

Or it may bo compared to feeding dogs with jellies and
blancmanges. The dog would rather have the original
bones out of which this highly finished jelly has been
made and without the sherry and flavors. Yes ; the
Christianity current in China now is just the same as it is
met with in the West, only translated in toChinese characters,
and we, all the time, suppose we have done all we can, or
ought to do, and have done it in the right kind of way to
win the soul to God. Far, far, from this is the idea of
bringing the thought of God to the longings of the heart
as found here, and in channels and forms, along and
with which they look for all that is the gift and message
of High Heaven. Surely, as nearly as possible, to wh at
they regard as the sacred way of sacred truth should we
bring it to them, for certainly in such way it came to us.

Are there not among us those who, denouncing “ forms,”
are yet teaching and doing that which has a tendency to
produce (or impose), as it were, “ formations,” in, or by
which, the learner becomes imbedded, and goes no further.

How very imperfect and shallow it must sound to a really
thoughtful Chinese, to hear for the sum and chief point of
our religion that “Jesus can pardon sins." Can you not
feel that? Put yourself in his place, and 6ee. These lines
are written from such a standpoint, and in no 6ense intended
to derogate for a moment that great truth of the Jewish
Christian Church.

That western preachifying is inferior to catechising, as a
means of edification, seems beyond all question, and, carried

35

to extreme, it unquestionably obscures the essential idea of
worship, and virtually hinders edification.

Teach by the actual and the concrete — as your Master,
not by Technical Definition. This latter is Western
altogether, and in Christianity, modern.

Too much stress could not be laid on the necessity of
using, as prime accessories of teaching. Simile, Parable,
Narrative, Dilemma and Catechising. Continued question and
instruction. Instruction and subsequent questioning of the
neophytes at every service is indispensable in the case of
the lower classes, especially just in the reception of truth.

We must consider the qualifications of Native teachers
with a reference to what they have to do, and also with re-
fered to what we emphatically do not want them to do.
They have to teach and examplify the Christian religion
forcibly yet simply. They have not to engage the thoughts
and energies of their people on theological refinements fit
only for advanced minds.

The process of coming from darkness to light is one
which there is abundance of evidence to show, is not al-
ways aided by the full, clear, distinct statements of the very
intelligent when made to the uncultivated. There is a re-
lation of congruity in teaching, and it demands that it
shall not violated ; at least that every effort be made to
lessen the violence done to it by the necessary elevation of
one mind above the other. In other words, this is again
the recognition of the inexorable presence and action of the
laws of gradualness, as in operation between the teacher and
the taught, or in the teacher, and as distinguished from its
operation in the taught.

The question is not really after all so much how to clothe
and apply the doctrine, as how to unclothe it from what
we have put round it in the course of centuries ; but this
remark is made apart from the consideration that Universal
Truth may have particular, temporary, special, and even
local form, expression, and accident

The human mind is liable to conceive nothing more
readily than that God might (as we say) have chosen other
and more perfect ways for teaching the human race — simpler,
surer, quicker. But it is quite evident that, circumstanced
as man is, and under the persent constitution of things, these
conceivably perfect plans would have been out of harmony
with things as we see and know them to to be; so therefore,
there is no greater impertinence than for man to suppose

36

that things could Lave been managed better on the
■whole, especially since we don’t know the whole end
of creation, and can therefore be no fit judges of the
means and conditions of things in their progress toward
that end. This being all most indisputably so it has a
lesson for us, (1) To recognize that, as it hath pleased the
Great Ruler of all to, as it were, and for want of better words,
permit limitations from evil circumstances to his moral
power, so, tve cannot proceed to act in ways which
virtually ignore what the Divine power and wisdom re-
cognize, God having in one view of the matter committed
the progress of this Truth and Church, to the mercy
almost of these said limitations.

(2) This teaches us positively that wheras “ the-prac-
ticable-under-the-circumstances” distinguishes the Divine
dealings with man in this imperfect and disorganized
state of matters, so should it be an element always in our
thoughts, and this without interfering with the Ideal that
ought never to be lost sight of.

Lastly as regards teaching, we would ask, and ask with-
out wishing to throw any slur on the proper province of
Dogmatics and dogma, Do you ever try in teaching of or
writing for the Chinese, “ to make them conscious of truth
solemn and tender in theirself-evidence” — to “ make explicit
to them that “ implicit ” and already enfolded in their spiri-
tual nature ?”

Do you “ seek for every shred of truth and good in the
local modes of thought, so as to secure all possible lines of
genuine sympathy from which to advance into new fields,
not stepping over the whole interval between opposed
religions and the Gospel, but seeking to carry the hearts of
men from the best they already love to the better still they
are capable of loving ? ”

No. XXI.

REMARK ON ENQUIRERS.

There seems only necessity to make one remark ; one
which seems to touch the centre of the question — and
that is, the simple enquiry, How much is there in the
man, or in the movement, that is really of value in the
sight of Heaven — in this turning, is it, as far as I can
judge, the embryo of a real moral and spiritual change in
the relation of the creature to his maker ?

37

No. XXII.

ACCESSORIES OF MISSIONARY WORK.

Man’s nature can be appealed to and conciliated iu
many ways. Good, excellent things please his senses.
High moral views, rightly exhibited and consistently lived
out, his conscience approves ; and they destroy his suspi-
cions. Good composition and style appeal to his proper
and pardonable literary taste. A proper worship satisfies
his spiritual instincts. Virtuous acts of beneficence speak
a universal language, and make slander an impossibility.

In a word, “ whatsoever things are right ” and excellent
in the eyes of he Chinese, think on these things, is a sentence
that we would feel to be in full accord with the sentiments
of the man who first used the well-known words with which
they begin.

No amount of ignorant slander, opposition, misconstruc-
tion, or diversity of opinion or practice, however really
absurd, must ever stand in the way of our seeking the good
of this people in any way they’ll permit, if not in the best
possible way. Don’t turn away because you can’t or they
will not stand on Western professional ettiquette. No ;
do all you can to seek their good. Never willingly indulge
the feeling of leaving them to themselves on such grounds,
however much possibility of misconstruction may induce
habitual caution.

Where opposition to the gospel is inveterate the use of
medical simples undoubtedly tends to restrain it and gra-
dually dispel it as a preparatory for, perhaps in conjunction
with, teaching. The idea, of course, is negatively to act
on public hostility, and this, whether done by medicine or
special literature appropriate to this object and stage of
matters, is right.

But, apropos of this, we have to enter our protest against
“ evidential doctoring,” i.e., practising for the sake of evi-
dencing the truth — proving — Christianity, as it were,
whereas it only proves the drugs are good and rightly and
intelligently prescribed. God sees not as man sees. Jesus
Christ felt not about his works as men speak about them,
much less as modern medical missionaries, or missionary
medical men have drifted into feeling about theirs. Christ’s
work of beneficence shewed the heart of the Godhead yearn-
ing over and laboring for a sin-sick and burdened Human

3tf

nature — in a word, in all their afflictions Himself afflicted.
The mind that should be in us 1

No. XXIII.

STAGES OF MISSIONARY WORK.

Distinguish pioneer thoughts, views, plans, books, and
modes from the pastoral mind, weapons, object, books. It
is in this latter, as we take it, that Redemption in all the
depth of its objective aspects and subjective effects can,
and is to be, brought before them.

The first thing seems to be, to ask what is the method
adapted to the state of things in any given time and place,
taking fully into account the state of the native mind
towards you, as you both presume it to be on the whole,
have found it to be in individuals, and have modified it
by your action.

There is a stage of only gaining people’s confidence and
affections, and many measures and plans suited to other
stages are plainly uusuited to this particular one. It
must be evident how little use words are till confidence in
the speaker is moderately established by observation of
his acts.

Has it ever appeared to you that the planting of Chris-
tianity in China may now be approaching a polemic stage,
in which Confucian and other champions may come down
to the tournament and make, or give, such opportunity
for, a display that will interest the whole Empire in the
result. Never in such an encounter has Christianity came
off second.

The writer of the Epistle of the Hebrews gives us his
ideas pretty freely about “ foundations,” and “ principles,"
and “ going on,” and “ feeding with milk,” and “ strong
meat,” and so forth.

“ Stages ” are not of one kind. Stages are to be con-
sidered in the evangelization of a person, a family, a village,
a city or district, a province, the whole kingdom ; and
then again, with reference to the different classes of persons
in the said district, province, or kingdom.

39

No. XXIV.

SOME PRINCIPLES UNDERLYING THE ESTA-
BLISHMENT AND USE OF POSITIVE CHRIS-
TIAN INSTITUTIONS AND ORDINANCES,
BOTH SPIRITUAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL.

“ To form institutions in advance of society is a great
mistake, and almost as great a mistake as to keep institu-
tions behind the advance of intelligence,” &c. It is a re-
mark as common as it is inexorably true, that as long as
the human nature remains as it is, so will things remain
pretty much as they are ; and we may add, irrespective of
institutions, so-called. Institutions are to be evolved out
of certain elements or conditions, either already existing
or brought about ; that is, as distinguished from the im-
posing or laying upon others of them. Nor does this idea
of their being not imposed, debar the notion of moulding
that which is evolved.

Institutions presuppose real varying necessities to be
met ; therefore should be shaped accordingly, not arbitrarily,
nor after a fixed model or letter. Further, an institution
that is to be worthy of the name, if anything, supposes that
the persons concerned are alive to and feel these said
necessities, and the aim of the institution; further, that
they more or less possess capacities for conducting it when
once established ; such are, appreciation of the aim in view,
regularity, coustaucy to principle, and in procedure ; some
acquaintance with the exercise of power, and fearlessness
of the result of doing right; exactness of plan, and willing-
ness to spend time and money for a public end; to say
nothing of unity and sinking of private end for general
benefit. The last few are some of the secondary require-
ments that have to be present, but that the members who
work an institution should have first the clearest and most
indubitable beacons marked out for them and always before
them, seems too apparent almost to need mention, were
it not that we see so much that warrants a fear to the
contrary.

Closely touching this question is that, whether is Christain-
ity a message of truth suited to the human heart and
calculated to introduce new, devolop dormant, and entrain
existing forces for the the furtherance of it own cause in

40

each heart, and collectively in the world; or is it an imposed,
tutorial, and external economy anywhere or ever ? Why are
there these parables that liken this Heaveu-boru sway on
earth to an inworking energy of unlimited competence ?
And how is it they are confined to this object and not ap-
plied to the forerunning dispensation ? Why this absence of
instruction, injunction, and rules properly so->called, in the
founding ?

Can there be conceived anything more calculated to defeat
its end than the external compliance with some formality
while the vital truth, meaning, and spirit, of the form are
as yet not understood nor the ordinance cared for. Such a
course, favoured, encourages the mind to save itself the
trouble of thinking out spiritual religion, and helps the
ignorant to substitue for new conscious light and power a
mere acquaintance with their tokens.

I think this a view that should not be forgotton in dealing
with those emerging from heatheadom viz — “ I shall be glad
even however little youjcan do for God. All the worship, all
the alms, all the help you can give, and give cheerfully, I
will cheerfully receive. Of course, I tell you plainly that,
the True God is not to be served in any measure less than
the false ones, but yet, notwithstanding, all, be it little or
much, — given, not as then, from selfishness, but now in
faith on the Unseen — I cheerfully receive in God’s name.”

This seems far superior to always keeping ourselves in a
state of chronic discontent at the native as if their Heavenly
Father hated them for doing so little. Perhaps after all
He doesnt so approve of all we have done for them in train-
ing them into doing so little from the outset.

The Apostles were not church makers, and yet chur-
ches sprang everywhere from their teaching. Of course
it may truly be said the early churches where just Christian
synagogues, but I think it will be found, too, that they
taught these things, i.e. they unhesitatiugly laid down the
principles and encouraged the tendency in man to federate
and hereby help growth and development.

For this inevitable propensity in man to “ party ’’ has a
meaning ; a good one when it goes under the direction of
right reason for the advancement of virtue, and nothing to
be ashamed of ; a wrong and vicious use is the only one
o be restrained.

Slow learning of Christianity is, as a rule, inevitable ;
and therefore the development of the perception of the

41

relative value of Christianity must be slow; hence the
teaching and organization must be as gradual, as simple,
and inexpensive as is suited to such conditions ; if not,
some pressure on the converts is inevitable ; and it has, in
many instances, proved fatally burdensome, especially when
imposed upon them and not self-assumed.

There is another way of bringing about this trouble, and
far more subtle, than the above-mentioned. It is our con-
ceiving fancied necessities for them — either conceived here
or imported from another state of society. But we can
nevertheless make them uneasy about themselves, and
over-anxious to assume church burdens in the same way as
they to follow their foreign teaching in most things, and
often proceed to carry it out with an indiscretion that the
originator would have been the first to censure.

Admitted the ideal desirability of a command, doctrine,
or rite, being perfectly observed, must, then, the actual ac-
ceptance of it be equally peremptory, absolute, or cau it
wait till a Christian consciousness of its reasonableness,
fitness, and desirability has grown so as to produce an un-
constrained service of the spirit, not of the letter, from
converts, they being, meanwhile, led.

I fear in our day the word of Him would be, “ Ye are
they who enjoin the institutions of men as the institutes of
God — ye strain out gnats of error and swallow camel-loads
of luxury and inconsistency.”

See that, in the early stages of Church forming, parti-
cular care be taken that the more worldly and venal don’t
disgust, offend, and produce an extrusion or repulsion of
the good. I fancy the “ Church of Jesus,” (a name or a
misnomer, by the way, we don’t remember any sufficient
and pertinent authority for) in this land of China, has al-
ready, on this account, eaten no small amount of bitter

Property and endowment, as the possession of infant
Churches, are dangerous as leading to all know what.

It is of the primest importance to recollect that no mat-
ter, how good your organization may be, unless the very
best men are appointed selected to work it, it will still be
unavailing.

Never allow anyone to present Christianity as an obliga-
tion to be met and shouldered by the convert before even
the rootlets of the truth — the germs of the source of all
power — are to be found in his heart. A lever without a
fulcrum wore as reasonable and as effective.

42

With reference to tlie theory of “ propping ” weak
Churches, and gradually taking the props away through a
course of years, we would say, not only is it troublesome,
heartburning, but unnecessary. That is, the necessity for
it is probably a fancy resulting from our coming from the
West and imagining all that there is, must be here repro-
duced, and as quickly as possible.

Childhood is the period of simple food and few wants.

Nothing raises more trouble in China than the scruples
of native Christians about heathen rites over the dead.
Of course the outward and visible form is, in the eyes of
the natives, much nearer the essence of the matter — much
more an equivalent — .than in ours. But really and truly,
where the (Scripture) authority for our rites of burial or
marriage ? We fancy that question of Western burial and
marriage customs (not rites) would stand an investigation
very poorly if judged by the purist principles laid down
for the Church of China.

Or, it may be asked further, which is the most im-
portant, heathen rites, or the grave and repeated protest of
convinced but coerced men who can only protest?

It is hardly necessary to remark that conspicuous
Western public Christian services and ceremonies, as a
rule, and as they are to put it mildly, can be found to
have no tendency to further the doctrine.

No. XXV.

THE SABBATH.

In all questions regarding this it seems very necessary
to clearly distinguish the principle of keeping it and the
manner of doing so.

Let us remember there was a primaeval sabbath, of the
patriarchs in their condition ; and of the Jewish polity,
legally regulated, and on which its society was framed from
its very foundation in the wilderness.

It is important to remember that the day of rest is not
only, nor simply, an ordinance, but rather itself a fact
proclaimed and maintained by the Universal Church irres-
pective of its acceptance by others, as a standing pledge
of the Creator’s free grace, first to all mankind in their
labour, difficulty and anguish of unceasing toil, the special
embodiment of a gospel for the work-bound ; next, and as

43

more commonly recognized, in its ordinary Christian
sense, a pledge of the gospel for the sin-conscious and soul-
weary. To the first class it tells in unmistakeable terms the
divine will that a continued, unmitigated, groaning and
travelling in worldly toil is not their Father’s will nor
desire, however they may fail to perceive its intent or its
advantage. This is not bread and butter theory ; it is
downright evangelical philosophy — which frees man by
communicating the fact of the freedom.

There was a country and time when “ three timos a year
shall all thy males appear before the Lord ” was the rule of
the public worship of God appointed by God.

I knew a man turned out of house and home “for the
word of God and for the testimony of Jesus Christ ” — a
most consistent (perhaps ?) Christian Chinese, but one who
had to work on Sunday as well as worship — he was both
proved and persecuted — yet I suppose he would be in the
eyes of many, a Sabbath breaker, and one of those to
whom Christ would not, in their estimation, say, “ Come
unto Me.”

I knew a Chinese who, when the foreman of the gang of
farm laborers ordered him to work on Sundays, though he
refused, yet offered to hire a man in his place for the day.
He was accounted a Sabbath breaker in my hearing, by
foreigners, for doing so. He afterwards, however, become
the founder and leader of a new company of Christians on
going to work in a fresh village, and is their recognized
local-head.

XXVI.

CHURCH MEMBERSHIP.

The Chinese have a natural, and under the circumstan-
ces a really pardonable inclination to enter any kind
of a “hui” that has the idea of mutual support, party,
or protection, about it ; and this must be so, simply because,
and so long as, the Government of the country does not
protect it subjects.

The aged mostly receive truth from conviction producing
a decision to do so, the young, often from impulse. Time
tests impulse more than decision : the inference is obvious.

We believe it is the condition of the churches who receive
members quickly, and in face of what they themselves assent
to regarding “ growth in grace,” to also have large numbers

44

of members under discipline. We do not, however, confuse
quick with incautious reception, nor carefulness with
stringency and narrowness.

Do what we will, or say what we please, human nature
remains very human still ; aye, even presumably regenerat-
ed nature carries a good deal of the old man into its deal-
ings, and so the Chinese regard being let into the church
very much as our “ taking off the screw." This often
being so, it proves on closer examination what we should
expect ; for regeneration means new birth, but that is far
from meaning new manhood — something to which they
grow up in all things afterwards.

On this view, and in order to the discernment of some
degree of Christian adolescence the Primitive Church, in
its day and sphere, decreed classes of catechumens, wdth
separate and graduated instruction and worship for them,
as all, even superficially acquainted with early history,
know. If that system had faults, let these faults not be
repeated. Such is the use of history. If it had in it what
is pertinent to us, or of universal and unchangeable good,
then let us accept and adopt it.

We ask you to note that those who hold the highest
views on sacramental elficacy are yet the same men who
labour most pointedly at “ preparation ” of their converts
for that sacrament. They are moreover those who retain
a rite — a check rite practically — between baptism and the
communion — viz., confirmation, for which, I believe, eccle-
siastical authority only is contended.

We must confess that we know of no test given in
Scripture, or valuable in experience, except the one, “ By
their fruits ye shall know them, for every good tree bringeth
forth good fruit.”

We take our stand on that one positive qualification for
admission of those to the Christian Church otherwise
eligible. They are the only things, i.e., actual facts, on
which we are competent to decide as to their existence and
sufficiency, though, often, indeed, hardly as to their
genuineness. It is only requiring that all who take upon
themselves this profession shall more or less actually,
tangibly, and visibly express and represent the principles
and doings of Jesus Christ in this land of China. If not,
a church of any other kind is a misrepresentation.

Baptism may be said to have two ordinary and untheo-
logical aspects (nothing in these “ Bemarks ” being in-

45

tended to touch the Theology of matters they deal with) —
viz., What it indicates to the subject of it, concerning his
altered relations; and secondly, what it is construed by the
world to mean. The subject of it, it severs and decides for
a cause of truth and good. Hence the argument for using
it pretty freely, and on all who wish to take this step. But
it is also interpreted, and rightly too, as attaching its
subjects to the visible communion and body of Christians,
and as a public manifestation of who are and who are not
to be regarded as so attached ; hence the need for caution ;
but yet such a caution as proceeds from and is always
mingled with a kindly cherishing of all or any who may yet
be one or some of the least of the little ones.

Bishop Jeremy Taylor states in the dedication prefixed
to, we think, his “Holy Dying” — and we can hardly find
a better witness on such a matter in such a connexion — “ that
no ceremony can make a spiritual change without a spiritual
act of him that is to be changed, nor can it work, by
way of nature, but morally, and after the manner of reason-
able creatures,” and so we feel ready to act on that same
view and fear no argument legitimately flowing from it
with reference to either the living or dead. And we cite
the above merely because we had more than once heard from
unsuspected quarters expressions that seemed as if they
had some undercurrent or lurking feeling that, somehow or
other, the benefit of the doubt had always to be given to the
candidate for baptism in some way or other, hoping thus to
help him.

The following reasons taken collectively seem to warrant
the general principle that a long probation is desirable for
converts before receiving them to full communion.

1. — The primitive church found it increasingly needful.

2. — Christian faith must grow; and growth demands time.

3. — Old habits are the greatest foes to faith ; habit de-
mands time for its eradication.

4. — Probation is analagous to assayiug : when proved to
be genuine, stamp it.

5. — Because the most hopeful men often seem shallow
in time of temptation, and their Christianity almost seems
a mere gloss. This only appears in time.

6. — Because delay only can prove the power of the con-
vert to pass the critical periods free from idolatrous rites.

7. — To see if family quarrels, questionable motives, or
perilous connexions, leak out.

4G

8. — To see if they stand persecution, tho best church
discipline, the purging fan.

9. — To see if hidden or checked evils re-develop.

10. — To wait the passing over of the Hush of excitement
and novelty that possesses the neophyte, and espcially in
proportion as he is sanguine and attractive.

11. — Because, as tho church enlarges, others have to be
more relied on who are less acquanted with the gravity of
the matter, and time is needed to help them to discern
manifestly, i.e., to serve as experience for them.

No. XXVII.

ORGANIZATION.

How far shall we organize and depend on it ? The
answer is, “ as far as is is called for, and no farther.”
Less, won’t do. More, will burden your converts. In a
word, there are several things which correspondingly develop
and necessarily proceed together in any Christian work,
such as : —

(1) The development of the capacity — appetite for
Truth.

(2) The development of the spiritual and ethical in
them.

(3) The development of the necessity for and capability
of positive institutions and organization.

(4) The development of the capacity of appreciating dis-
cipline.

None of these four conditions or states stands out of
connection with the other three ; the lack or excess of either
will surely manifest itself.

We conceive that we are saying a good deal for all such
organization as tends to the autonomy of native Churches,
when we say it is the condition for freeing those foreigners
who should be at the front, that is, not necessarily in propria
persona, but their energies at the front. It matters verylittle
where a man’s body is if his energy is not going on trifles.
In the earlier stages of Church-forming, appoint those whom
God marks for the work. We say appoint, no matter what
your theories are on the matter. Definitely mark their
duties for them. No general instructions will do for a
Chinese. Subsequently let them be taught gradually to
revise or endorse as they please, your appointment. But

in the first place be sure you have the right man or better
not stir at all.

No. XXVIII.

WORSHIP AND EDIFICATION.

Enjoin reverence on the converts; nay, do more than
enjoin it. They often seem to think the more flippant they
are, as a rule, the better.

Inexorably regular private devotion at home is nowhere
to be more pressed than in China; especially owing to the
hindrances in the way of half the population — women — •
attending worship in public.

One of the most incontrovertible and appreciable features
of the Heavenly Doctrine is its giving to men, and exhort-
ing men to, a pure, Divine, life-helping, soul-satisfying, and
elevating worship. Let China once understand and see
that that , and not feats of controversial dexterity, theo-
logical juggling, nor jaunty flippancy, is its first gift and
first requirement, and who or what will withstand its
sway ?

No. XXIX.

PIETY AND EDUCATION.

Expend, or cause to be expended, the same care on
deepening and consolidating your converts as on acquiring
them ; and recollect as Evangelization has its true prin-
ciples and appropriate modes which concern the extension
of the Gospel directly ; so has Edification its right methods,
&c.; and they also are very closely allied to, and concern
the extension and fortunes of the Gospel, though in-
directly.

Don’t let them learn more or faster than they under-
stand, nor any one other book until the previously learned
is understood.

What is “ meat,” and what is “ milk ? ” Meat is just
what infants can’t swallow, nor if swallowed, digest.

Analyse carefully the actual wants of your converts in
the * order of their importance and dependence. Diagnose
their evils and treat them accordingly.

Teach very much deeper within the Church than what
you preach outside. This is not wearing a mask. It is
this that Christians must be taught, built, and fed as others
can’t be, and if you don’t do it your Christians will remain

48

dwarfs, but let no high development of teaching lead them
to either an obnoxious and hateful pride, an empty self-
satisfaction or an indiscreet traversing of your special inten-
tion. The matter may be viewed this way. Our Chris-
tianity should be like one of those closely-leaved flowering
shrubs we have so often seen in a perfect sheet of bloom.
One look and the attention is rivetted — every thought is
lost in one feeling of admiration at what meets the eye.
It commands the taste of the bluntest. But the enquiring
mind asks, “ Whence comes all this ?” — And one answers,
“ From the root.” So it is. Our lives and our Churches
should more prominently manifest the beauty of holiness
and the fruits of the spirit. These universally command
admiration, and China would be struck, and would ask,
“ Whence comes all this ? ” and the answer would be the
same, “From the Root.” What is the Root? It is
knowledge of One Living and True God, beside which all
other knowledge is as naught. And how does that serve
to make so much display ? Ah I Here is the province of
Christian, teaching — viz., to make patent the knowledge,
and perfect and real, the connection in the souls, between
the One Root (which so concerns the Heathen), and these
supernatural displays with which we should prove the
Redeemer’s doctrine to be divine.

That is, we take it, the province of Church superstruc-
tural teaching, as distinguished from that which is proper-
ly missionary and radical.

No church can afford to despise education in the ordinary
sense when considered in relation to superstition, fanati-
cism, and religious error.

Education of women, as an accessory of a Church al-
ready established, if accomplished in ways that will not
develop venality or hypocrisy in the parents, unfitness for,
and discontent of life at home, must be regarded as a most
valuable outgrowth and accompaniment of a Christian
Society.

No. XXX.

SOME REMARKS ON THE EXERCISE OF
CONRTOL OVER CONVERTS.

Practically I would restrict a voice in the exercise of
Church authority to those members who are evidencing
their vitality by working.

19

I tliink as a whole we foreigners are inclined to mix
laxity in admitting to the Church with subsequent incon-
siderate severity of discipline for contempt of positive or
ecclesiastical institutions.

Ask yourself on this matter of discipline. How much
of the notion of the superiority of foreigners enters into it.
How much do you feel inclined to dogmatise on your poor
weak brother fur whom Christ died ? Ah ! how different a
spirit would we show if we were indeed clothed with an
ardent compassion to our poor struggling brothers — first
fruits of heathendom — each so very dear to God. Oh ! let
us cultivate that.

No. XXXI.

PERSECUTION.

Ascertain whether all persecution (except that arising
from the direct hatred of light and good by the wicked)
hasn’t a real and somewhat justifiable cause — and whether
it be not due to the exhibition of controvesial virus by
Christians, or what not. Truly to-day, as then, is it neces-
sary to put the question. “ Who is he that will harm you
if ye be followers of that which is good ?” But I fear our
native Christians in fol lowing good, often do unloving
things to irresponsible people and hence, trouble.

Meet opposition by dissolving it, not by proclamations
to repress it ; for the most virulent is that which official
proclamation cannot stem, i.e. family and friends casting
off one.

Persecution is the sifting necessary for the correction of
false views among natives regarding the Kingdom of God ;
and in establishing a doctrine such as this, in hearts such
as these are, in a world such as this is, and for practical
use in the disordered circumstances of life, then persecution
is the one condition required to make the centre heart and
beginning of the movement, sound and sincere, and as no
disciplinary system could or ought.

Moreover, persecution is a necessity to train and temper
them to a degree of hardness adequate to the exhibition of
virtues that will command the admiration of even Chinese
stolidity. A proclamation converts the Church into a
refuge of desperadoes, to squeeze under foreign protection ;
but the chances of persecution prevent any but the genuine
from joining us, and, by spontaneously keeping the Church

50

pure, prevents the missionary from coming into that
disciplinary relation with those new converts who under-
stand it so little.

There seems to be no juncture in pursuit, or defence, of
right which firm adherence to principle and fearlessness
of consequences, trouble and death cannot find a solution
to.

It is a matter of far greater primariness and importance
that adherents be sound than numerous.

No. XXXII.

NATIVE SELF-EXTENSION OF THE
TRUTH.

To anything like an thorough evangelization of China,
foreigners must ever be inadequate : moreover, foreign
money must ever be inadequate. We may begin with the
idea, but neither far, wide, nor long can we go on with it.
China must be evangelized, in the thorough sense of the
word, by an ordinary process of Chinese telling Chinese.

This being so, ask yourself, are my principles and modes
of working such, or have they such tendencies, either by
the expectations they raise or otherwise, to create au im-
pressiou contrary to what I know, to be the inevitable truth
in this matter.

What am I relying on for the extension of the truth ? is
the (stimulus and) support of foreign money an element in
it ?

Do you, by carrying on foreign supported work in the
district where Christianity is already rooted, convey the
idea, as a consequence of so doing, that it is your duty to
do so and not that of the Native Church ? Do you thus
practically or virtually foreclose the opportunity for, and
stunt the growth of native aspirations after evangelization ?

Do you feel this, above everything, that the Gospel had
better not be preached than preached by men who do it for
mouey’s sake — that it is better to go forth alone with one's
servants and teacher than tempt a man to go for mouey to
affect the hearts of others ?

The Gospel has a power of self-extension. It has rightly
put such au inherent fitness for man’s heart that it carries this
stimulus and efficacy with it if unimpaired. Now, will such
impulses be trained and strengthened better by exercise and
being left to themselves, or by another stimulus of a very

different kind being incorporated with it, and that of a ten-
dency to supplant them ? Only one master, one ruling
stimulus can be in a man’s heart. Are those who have two,
or one, the best characters ?

Well, was it said “ Christ kept the unworthy aloof by
offering them nothing they could find attractive,” and as
for the worthy, to pay them is the surest way to make them
unworthy.

The idea that the Gospel will not spread, deepen and
support itself without foreign aid to local churches is now
known in this and other countries to be only an idea arising
out of (1) want of confidence in the inherent power of truth,
(2) impatience of the Divine permission of slow developments,
(8) a rather indiscriminating and confused want of ap-
precation of the real circumstances connected with the
Bpread of truth.

Nothing needs to be more clearly perceived or more
firmly held than this, that unpaid Heaven-sent and Heaven-
rewarded men are clearly superior to paid “stagers” for
advancing the truth in the hearts of others. There is a
boldness, freedom, and native consciousness of untainted
purity of intention about them that you find sadly contrasted
with the stiff, careful, quid pro quo pensioner-like spirit
found in the paid men, and which we fail to recognize as the
concomitant of what is heart moving ; thus, in both cases,
the issue proves our intuition to be correct.

Bo with the raising, care, and carrying on of Christian
organizations. Reward and acknowledgment there is and
ought to be unquestionably for all trouble incurred by any
one on behalf of others ; but nothing seems more certain to
the writer than that some, i.e., sufficient natives are in-
variably found competent, or become so after some short
time, for bearing the entire burden ; unless they have pre-
viously been either inoculated with the idea, or trained into
the habit of thinking that they are not.

The foregoing remarks are not, however intended to be
pushed to an extreme contradicted by common sense; for
instance, we distinguish “hiring” and “helping.” Foreign
money has its use, but it is a use consistent with all the
foregoing.

With reference to what natives preach ; it is manifest
that so long as they go merely or mostly to decry gambling,
opium, official oppression ; to ridicule idols, national
customs, foot-binding ; and extol Western civilization as

the burden of their message, so long will the Chinese con-
ceive wrongly of our meaning.

Some few remarks on extension — whether by natives or
others, may be subjoined here, e.g., Beware of the idea,
“ I’ll establish a mission at so and so.” That has been
the notion in China, but it wants true warrant and spiritual
wisdom. Select by trial the fittest place, and where the
Spirit has hearts prepared. Work there; not where you
determine, or is agreeable, or seems, in your opinion,
best.

Don’t fail to perceive that there is a medium between
careless, irregular scattering of Gospel seed, and the other
extreme of a too limited and too exclusively concentrated
effort on one spot.

Both must be combined, and, however, they be com-
bined, “ plan,” in our work, is indispensable.

It is a law which no organization can afford to despise,
viz.: — that men of proved effectiveness must have real
distinction made in their favour by those who are the
benefited, and separate spheres be allotted for their energy.

Religion is a pearl not to be cast before swine, yet,
natives must ever be cautioned that is it neither to be
concealed like contraband, nor selfishly to be hugged, but
a power that ever increases by the use.

Continuously unsuccessful missions, doubtless, on exa-
mination, will show some error, some breach or infringe-
ments of Christian principle. That is, speaking generally,
it will be so.

No. XXXIII.

CAUTIONS.

Readers of the above remarks will remember that they
fall under two heads, for the most part, viz. : — those prin-
ciples which are difficult to state and go more to the mould-
ing and forming of our views than anything else ; secondly,
those which are designed to influence action directly, yet
not to be carried out ruthlessly or rashly.

Nothing here said is to be construed into the condoning
of idolatry, or superstition, or the trying “ to fit lies into
truth,” or anything but a firm, yet patient, gradual, uncom-
bative, though not passive, opposition to error. Every
one can know and judge of our belief without controversy,

53

and the most powerful argument for our being right must
be our lives — “ the attraction of living goodness.”

Be slow in acting and deciding in China. Life — society
— moves much slower here ; or in other words, moral
forces take longer to produce effects. There are, too, often
unseen grounds of action or forbearance not yet brought
to light or understood.

It is a matter always demanding extreme caution when
mutually uncomprehended ideas and systems come into
contact ; but it has passed beyond the limits of caution
when you place two incompatible civilizationm conflict.

Converts would wish to change Temples into Churches.
It is not wrong, but is it premature ?

Beware of substituting Western Or Christian supersti-
tion for native.

The Chinese, under modern Christian teaching and
leading, invariably stress the “ learning ” of the doctrine
and disregard the life of Christianity. We are aware
that the word “ learn ” in Chinese has a somewat fuller
meaning than in the West. But the Primitive Church
had three or four classes of Catechumens. The period
of probation was from two to three years. Even the Creed
and the Lord’s Prayer were not learned till a few days
before Baptism. Now, for ichat, then, was that long delay ?
or for what kind of instruction ? Remember, I am not
seeking to justify that; but what was its meaning? It
had one, and one they were thoroughly alive to, and so
ought we.

‘ No. XXXIV.

POINTS FOR INQUIRY.

What is the misunderstanding between the Chinese and
Western mind? There is one — what is it?

What views and emotions prevent — hinder — the recep-
tion of the Gospel by Chinese ? They are most complex.
What are the natural solvents of them ?

The Deity has, with a wisdom which experience justifies
to us, prohibited symbolism in teaching man His name.
That same God used symbolism, and in Scripture is still
using it — to teach man of things not so defined or re-
stricted, and, in condescension to man’s nature as limited.
What lessons have these things for us ?

54

“ How may Christianity be safely put on a broader
trial ? — How best may we bring Christianity into contact
with the actual convictions of people here ?”

What are the well-meant efforts to advance Christianity
which may actually be all the while operating to retard
it?

What is it that in many places increases the coolness
and distance between resident missionaries and resident
Chinese to a very frigidness 1

CONCLUSION.

Lest these remarks should have begot only a passive ac-
quiescence, or, still worse, an indefinite impression — lest
any one should say, what practical issue should all this
have — in what respects is it intended I should be and act
different from at present. I reply, first, namely : In adopt-

ing the mind and living model of Jesus Christ as the at-
titude you take toward natives, that is, first, one of warm
loving and compassionate interest in them, and with, then,
a gentle forbearing, yet decided, testimony to the truth.

Recollect, too, that we stand before the Chinese, not as
conquerors, but as suppliants somewhat. Remember the
front which bare Confucianism has presented for two
thousand years to its compeers, and how it has maintained
that front on the whole.

Forget not the excellence of the precepts of its founder,
by the best and strictest of which you will be tested and
judged; men forgetting that their own shortcomings form
the one bar to the use of such a pure test by them, yet, this
the while, rightly nerving us, if for nothing else, still for this
to strive, viz: toshoiv them not merely that our written pre-
cepts exceed theirs, but that it needs what we have, a
special and supernatural impulse to carry out the high
requirements of their sage. He called, and he called well
and rightly, for the most uncommon and extraordinary
virtue. Let, then, the virtue that we exhibit be quite as
uncommon as what he justly required. If not, we will stand
condemned, and that justly, in the eyes of current scholars ;
and how much more by Him whom we say we have come
here to serve, and whose precepts we certainly are here to
exemplify.

Whatever may be inherent in human nature, indolence
certainly is, and in Christians as well as others, and so.

55

after all, much abused Confuciau morality lias two true
blessings for us, first to make us greatly ashamed of our
indolence, and secondly to set us on a just and honorable
course of emulation.

These remarks on our bearing towards the dominant
school of “ the greatest man of the largest kingdom ” are
not to be construed as coming from a lost admirer of that
school. Nor are they made in ignorance or forgetfulness
of the follies, of the empty pretensions of some of its most
prominent men, or of the imperfections sanctioned and
uncorrected by it. Much less is ignored the pitiable figments
which they have raised, in order, by them, practically to
deify their sage and so make his example and influence
complete.

Nevertheless, after all we can see (and who cannot ?)
features in Confucianism as an ethical system terminating
on society — the state — which entitle it to the deference
here claimed for it. If indeed its perfection and sufficiency
were here positively maintained, then its defects might
well be cited against these remarks. What we stress is
what it has done, not what it has not done ; what it
enjoins, not what it does not affirm, and that its principles
(not its methods) of social regulation are not inconsistent with
Christianity, and not that they are wholly sufficient. To
take its Classics and leading writings and judge of them
piecemeal is hardly better thau to judge of the Bible by an
examination of the Canticles and Apocalypse, and really,
we have no more desire to join in such a rude crusade of
criticism against it than we have to be, ourselves, judged of
in the above fashion, as if the short-sightedness of the early
Church on some things, the childish conceits of the fathers
and of the middle ages, or the errors of destructive criticism
in Germany, were forsooth to be sufficient grounds for proving
Christianity superfluous, erroneous or effete.

This being so, seek for and recognise candidly, as from
above, all truth held, however, imperfectly and mixedly.
Clear it. Draw the lessons from it. Lead them on beyond
it. Give up the despising of everything native. Lay aside
the tone of opposition. Cease to regard them as Canaanites
or to patronise them as negroes. Found good alone on good.
Be patient. Trust your own doctrine. Remember that, as
the faith of the embryo Jewish Church in its after spread
as Christianity recognized the worth of and drew into its
service the language and philosophy of Greece, the laws

56

and order of Rome, the customs and the free unfettered ideas
of the Teutonic races, and each in their turn to affect it, so,
perhaps there are in India and China social or religious
characteristics being formed, both real, and it may be
necessary to the future great organic unity of the kingdom
of God, treasures which, when appropriated, incorporated,
and revivified, will become the common blessings of
mankind. Recognise then a great possible future for
Christianity in China in the way just indicated, and do all
you can to aid towards it.

Study deeply and critically the conditions of our difficulties
and hiuderings. Offer them a gospel and a worship that
cannot but commend itself to them. In all your inter-
course, conversations and reasonings “ encamp near
the indisputable regions of practice ” lest philosophic
ground become a tournament on which they are hurt and
withdraw. Think of the absence of all precipitancy from
the Divine ways.

There is no use in western scholars searching up and
providing materials and thinking while we work on blindly.
It comes to this, there must be an absolute change of
spirit in the way we regard men if we want to win them,
and this must find effective and appropriate expression and
form in our lives and literature.

Such a change being made — no, not a change — a reverting
to our true attitude, there will gradually follow in the
Chinese throughout the eighteen provinces the feeling that
both sides have misunderstood one another, and, good feeling
being once established, we may trust the truth in free
unfettered form to commend itself to human hearts and win
them back to full allegiance to their Heavenly Father.